By Gary Dawson
More people are using artificial intelligence at work than ever before, yet most of them are teaching themselves. According to American AI Sentiment in 2026, a report from Gallup and the Special Competitive Studies Project, 51% of U.S. adults now use AI at least sometimes at work, at school, or in their personal lives. That is up from 39% just one year earlier.
So how are they learning? Mostly by asking the tool itself. Gallup found that 57% of Americans have asked an AI for help using AI, and 26% have turned to online videos or blogs. Only 16% have completed training provided by their employer. That gap is an opportunity.
Employees are telling us what they want. Two thirds of Americans (66%) support creating training programs on the job that teach workers how to use AI, and Gallup notes that this support holds steady across party lines. Few workplace topics earn that kind of agreement.
Familiarity with AI has not produced confidence in it. Only 28% of Americans trust AI to make fair and unbiased decisions. When asked what would build that trust, respondents pointed to greater transparency about how AI reaches its decisions (49%) and testing by independent experts (48%). In other words, people want to understand a tool before they rely on it.
That makes a useful blueprint for any training program. Before you roll one out, do your due diligence and interview multiple AI training providers. What tasks are your employees already using AI for? Where could it save real time, and where could a confident but incorrect answer cause real harm? Who reviews the output before it reaches a client, a candidate, or a colleague?
Good AI training does more than teach people how to write prompts. It teaches judgment. It shows employees where the technology shines, where it stumbles, and why a human still needs to check the work.
So do your research. Learn what today’s AI can and cannot do. Be thoughtful and deliberate as you build training around it. And above all, trust but verify.
Source: Gallup and the Special Competitive Studies Project, American AI Sentiment in 2026. Based on a survey of 3,152 U.S. adults conducted June 2 to 23, 2026.